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2014.06.06 - Ghosts from the Past - Finale
To say the situation with Sidewinder has occupied a lot of Maria's time and thoughts would be... something of an understatement. The astute SHIELD agents may have noticed she went from 'Voice over the comms' to 'Backup pilot' to now 'suited up for mission'. Yes, even she's here this time around, suited up and geared up for whatever may be awaiting everyone in Scotland. Fun times. As it went with the first mission to deal with Sidewinder, with so many volunteers Maria's brought in two Quinjets to shuttle everyone over, and her voice comes over the comms loud and clear. < We'll be arriving within spitting distance of Sidewinder's Scottish compound within a few minutes. Quite frankly? I have no idea what's there. Yet. Agent Yamaguchi was sent to infiltrate a few days ago, and we have had no contact. Those were her orders. She'll be communicating once she knows we've landed, and then I'll have something to pass on. > Not Maria's preferred way of running an op, but given the circumstances... < You may have heard the rumours that Agents Stone, Tennant, and Smith have vanished. We have confirmation from independent CCTV that they were snatched by Sidewinder agents. I haven't received anything, but no doubt they're being used as bait to lure us in. > Lure /her/ in. Stone especially. < This is how we're going to run it. Black, Sofen – you're with me on Alpha. Shapandar, Ultra Boy, Digby – you're with Agent Kavanaugh on Bravo. You four take the outside and secure it. The three of us will rendezvous with Agent Yamaguchi on the inside and find our missing agents. Am I understood? > ‘Etta’s rather prim, straight-backed posture and solemn expression is rather at odds with the image otherwise conveyed by her black-on-black tactical SHIELD-issue armor. She sits as near as she can manage to Maria on the jet in, silently performing a check on the equipment she’ll carry in with her. Plasma pistol, other pistol, the little bits and bobs produced for her by one Doctor Banner. She reaches down to check the telescoping shock baton strapped to her left thigh holster and... doesn’t quite touch it. This is what happens when one of the foremost scientific minds of the day decides to alter your equipment between dinner and a movie because he’s irked that you’ve been assigned a body guard and worried. ”Com check.” She says in her crisp, clipped British voice, reaching up to adjust her earpiece. She looks like she might want to say more in a way, but of course, Agents never do. All doubts and softer feelings get neatly tucked away into a dark corner, and then later liberally drowned in scotch. If there is a later, of course. Karima is also a new Agent with SHIELD but it's obvious from her gear selection that she is no stranger to combat ops. She wears tactical gear in the form of load-bearing harness and various holsters. There's a compact KRISS Super-V sub-machinegun in a two-point harness across her chest with all the bells and even a couple whistles. A pair of Glock 21, .45 caliber pistols rest in tactical holsters under her left arm and down her right thigh. A fixed-bladed knife extends from the top of each boot and there appears to be various types of small grenades attached at key points of her harness. Not that ANY of that gear really matters to the machine that lies waiting beneath that soft-looking dusky skin. Silently, her 'voice' issues across the comm channel with "Com check." in a definite British accent but one that is a bit harder to place than Henrietta's North London. Martin Kavanaugh brings his hand away from his ear, briefly, before clicking down on the PTT button on his comms controls, speaking lowly, subvocally, from the mic around his neck. <> He says, before looking over to the other three in the QUinjet with him. "All right, folks. Nice to meet you, as I don't think we've met." He notes, moving to examine gear as he talks, double checking clips of ammunition striped with different color tape, grenades, both thrown and air launched, and the various odds, ends, and gadgets that were very useful in very limited circumstances. "I don't want anyone here dying. Likewise, I don't want anyone here thinking that certain superpowers in their dossier mean that they can rush in and deal with this sort of facility without stealth and precision. Your initiative extends to the role your assigned. It does not go furthur. If you want to be cowboys and girls, then go to Texas and interview with Public Safety. We're professionals, here." A quick check of a stilleto type knife stored in a boot, a collapsable baton to his side, a Glock 19 holsterd at his thigh, and an M4 assault carbine at his front, suppressor tightly attached to the barrel at the end, greande launcher already loaded with an anti-vehicular suprise in case their was an ambush. He pulls back on the rifle's charging handle, before releasing, sending a round into the chamber. "Am /I/ understood?" There was a brief pause between his last words, and his transmission to Maria only. << I don't like this, AD. This is a high-end field op, and, with all due respect, the rest of the jokers on this flight are expendable. I can't say the same goes for you. >> It was a pleasant flight to Scotland, and Karla is looking forward to the mission, it has been a whie since she was able to visit Europe. She enjoys the flight by napping a little and alternating with reading 'A Traveler's Guide to Scotland.' When the jet slows, she adjusts and gets ready to exit. Ms. Marvel has no gun or special equipment aside from: stripper boots, her SHIELD ear-com, and a scarf. Jo is carrying whatever equitment he has been assigned, including his shield com and uniform, but only has his Legion gear as extra. He is not used to using extra gear, and so anything extra could be in the way or get forgotten. He responds to Martin, "Clear sir." He activates his com, "Com Check." In place for several days, Agent Yamaguchi has not looked much at all like herself, and still doesn't. Or didn't. As soon as the passive receiver embedded in the fob on her wrist picks up the incoming quinjets' comm sweep satellite signal, the fob sends a signal to the burst transmitter Yamaguchi hid just outside the compound upon her arrival. That signal causes the burst transmitter to spin up, drawing on the tiny power source it was given as it prepares and collates all of the data it has picked up in packet transmissions over the last several days ... and then relays them outward on a tight-band triple-encrypted channel directly to the lead quinjet, relayed from there to the second and to the satellite network overhead simultaneously, even as the onboard systems start the decryption protocols. The data starts unspooling and presenting itself to heads-up displays for the tactical teams and the pilots. The layout of the entire compound is presented in reasonable detail, along with breakdowns of barracks, gear, armouries, communications, security perimeters and weapons installations. Breakdowns follow giving details of the much more refined and powerful tech in use on site, with warnings tagging that there must be redevelopment teams onsite within the secured facilities /beneath/ the compound. Suspected locations for the holding cells of the captured SHIELD agents are highlighted, and details are given on guard shift changes and patterns of movement. Yamaguchi has even been kind enough to include communications frequencies and encryption protocols, thanks to apparently some gear she herself was issued. Most important is the highlighted presence of a set of blast doors outside the primary perimeter, on the far side of the compound from the current quinjet landing site. Notes indicate that at least one aircraft was seen departing from that area, so a suspected underground secured hangar is believed to lie beyond, but no photographs or sketches of the layout are provided. Apparently, Yamaguchi was not able to get that far in just a few days 'in country.' The tiny light on the fob on Yamaguchi's wrist lights up as the key signal is sent. That is her notification, the only warning she has that the mission has now switched from stealth infiltration and information gathering to S&D. Ninety seconds later, the pilots can see the digital handshake protocols being engaged, and then the team can all hear, "Silver Shadow reporting. Data burst should be complete. Activating locator beacon, and moving towards Point Delta on the attached maps." That would be the hangar bay doors. "Assume we are sill operating in capture mode?" If she's supposed to just kill her targets, she'll have to be given that order specifically. Double plasma sidearms are the weapons of choice for Carol today. No rifle it seems. She's going more for ease of use than range. Plus, a pair of plasma guns is some heavy firepower. She also has two backup batteries for them just in case. "Check." says the blonde as she joins the rest. Confirming that yes, her comms are working. Once more, she's on the job. Humor is left behind. Casualness is burned out. She's all professional and has one weapon out already. She -did- plan ahead though, and asked for an ICer sidearm which is holstered at the back of her belt. Never know when you might want a prisoner, right? Shrinking Violet sits back against her seat, strapped in, fiddling with the pocket sized screen known as an 'Omnicom'. On it is a mess of panels and windows. One show's CCTV footage obtained from the first operation, another has mission briefing and a few dossiers, another still with small doodles and notes that look like tactical theories. As ever before a serious engagement, her face was fixed on the screen as though trying to put off worry and nerves. Now and then she would mutter wordlessly to herself. So it is that when Maria begins briefing, she fumbles the small tablet with a startled squeek, luckily managing to catch it before it hits the ground, if barely. <>, comes the timid reply of the Legion's daring wallflower. Compared with the other agents present, she may look decidedly underequipped, with not a firearm in sight and only the hidden contents of her utility belt. She continues to stay quiet, still pouring over mission documents as Martin then comes across with their own communication and Vi takes a moment to compose her voice. <>, comes the reply, and she takes a deep breath. Nothing to worry about... she rarely did anything so blatently. Already she was once again absorbed in the compound layout, muttering to herself about key exterior locations. She would be doing this nearly up to drop. One of the things Katsuko's data gives Maria? An idea of where hostages may be held. < Data burst received, Silver Shadow. Proceed as normal. Neutralize any guards, then rendezvous with myself within the facility. Assumption is correct. > The Quinjets land just out of sigh, leaving a little ground to cover. Maria herself is leading one team, as she promised she would. < Understood, Kavanaugh. But nobody is expendable. Otherwise I'd be leaving Stone and the others in there. > This has become personal for Maria, sadly. The facility is pretty understated, like the others have been outside of the company's headquarters: one large building, surrounded by guard towards and patrolling guards. Power armour like before, but these move much more swiftly, more smoothly. Clearly what the teams saw before were prototypes. Or their engineers just got better. From the via on the small hill, Katsuko's intel can in fact be confirmed – there are a set of blast doors set into the ground. < Sofen, Danvers, Black. We're going inside to get out Stone and the others. Understood? > She pauses, avoiding a sweep of a searchlight, then makes a quick break for it, pressing against the base of one of the many guard towers. Silently she gestures, pointing at the sweeping lights, then gesturing for the three to join her. Henrietta watches Maria make like a nimble gazelle, deftly dodging the sweep of the pools of light that drift this way and that. She takes a moment to get a sense of their patterns before she follows, her funny flexible slippers dead silent as they strike the ground and propel her towards the deep shadow at the base of the guard tower. She arrives in the span of only a few quickened heartbeats, sinking into a crouch not a foot from Maria, eschewing anything showy like a series of aereals or something - they don't actually get you there any faster. At best, they're good for intimidating enemies and avoiding lasers. She looks up at her boss and, frankly, now friend and nods just once, the smallest of signs of encouragement. More can wait till after they have their people again. "< Wilco, Command. Silver Shadow engaging at Point Echo, will clear a path to Point Charlie. >" Yamaguchi sends. Point Echo is a point indicated on the maps as a vulnerable spot within the perimeter of the camp where a breach would be most likely to be successful, and point Charlie is the location indicated as the most likely location for the secured prisoners. On the ground inside the facility, Agent Yamaguchi sheds her Sidewinder uniform and gear, pulling up her hood and mask as the simple undercover agent disappears, replaced by the SHIELD ninja. Belts and harnesses are quickly secured, carrying a wide array of weapons and gear, and a silvery film covers over her eyes as she moves to action, subduing several guards and ziptying them in place. "< Blackout in three ... two ... one ...>" And then a sparkshower some thirty feet high geysers up from one of the buildings in the main compound ... and the lights go dark. The alert sirens that hadn't yet started to go off go silent. The hydraulics for the automated gun turrets spin down and die off. The only main system still operational are the communications networks for the base. And those have been compromised and handed over to SHIELD monitoring, thanks to Yamaguchi's earlier transmissions. Right on Maria's heels is Carol. Yeah, when the assistant director is in the field, Carol has decided that she's the personal bodyguard for the director. She hasn't told anyone but.. if it comes down to it, Carol is more expendable than Maria... in her own mind at least. She's not a ninja, but she moves like a well trained field agent to say the least. The lights move around the area and Karla watches the trails. Her eyes follow first Hill, then Black through the timing. Up, one foot from the ground, then she watches for the cycle. The shots across the distance in a suddne blur, then settles down next to Henrietta. She remains silent for nor, looking up from their current hiding point. Then the lights simply go out. Karla smirks and shakes her head a little bit as she listens to the ninja report in. Carol is watched carefully and intently to make sure she makes it. Then Karla leans against the wall and crosses her arms in front of her. < Kavanaugh. Take your team and hit Point Delta. Take anything not nailed down. If we can't take it, reduce it to rubble. I don't want any of their toys getting out, > Maria says, just as the power goes off. Oh, what good timing. The route between the hilltop and Point Delta's blast doors contains the most guard towers and patrolling guards. Maybe Maria just likes handing Martin and his teams a good challenge? Thankfully with no searchlights and no turrets, it'll be a little easier to get there... but the troops on the ground are already starting to panic. And though they're trying to communicate through their comm frequencies, SHIELD is already blocking them, thanks to Katsuko's information. It means they're nowhere near as organized as they may have trained for, and various guards are maneuvering on their own, looking for help or intruders. The very first guard tower has one guard, in power armour, tilted up and shouting at the guard in the 'nest' at the top. Something about whether or not the guns are working. The topside guard gives the negative, and the one on the bottom confirms that even his comms are down. Martin looks over the current team he has with him one last time, before keying in to the Comms. <> He leaves out the part that she was, of course, taking three SHIELD badasses and the current Ms. Marvel. Whereas he had one untested who was at least properly equipped, someone whose powers might go to his head, and a nervous women whose power might as well have been a turtle shell around her. "Ours is not to reason why." He mutters, before the Quinjet lands amids sparking searchlights and disable communications. At least Yamaguchi had gotten in and done some damage, though there wasn't much past the blast doors. If the operation was perfect, however, it could have been left to the territorials. The ramp comes down, and he quickly dashes off, hopping out and running toward cover from the ground itself, before someone with an imager could get lucky with a MANPAD. <> After the guard tower reports that it's guns are down, Martin raises his rifle, placing it to his shoulder, and flicking the gunsight of his to infrared, picking out the man in the tower. Once the man in the power armor moves on, there's a silent three round burst of armor-peircing discarding sabot, running a line from his upper chest, neck, and head, attempting to turn what was keeping him alive into so much organic paste. <> With that, he's up and running to the gap left by a dead man in a watch tower, hoping these people knew enough of their jobs to carry out those orders. Jo Says aloud, "Invulnerability!" Not that he actually has to say it out loud, it is just something he does to help ensure he does not switch powers accidentally...and right now his job is to be obvious. A nice shout is good at focusing attention on you...and he jumps into the air about four feet and flies forward using his flight ring. Actually, he is a fair hand with technology, but in this case he has a different assignment. Shrinking Violet keeps researchign right up to the point of engagement, when the Quinjet ramp comes down. Slowly standing and moving to the back, the change in her expression comes as slowly as the lowering ramp. From anxious and nervous, to resolute. << Y-yes sir>> comes over the comm, even as Violet reduces steadily in size. From a full grown woman, to smaller than a barbie doll, levitating up and setting herself on Martin's shoulder. Braced against Martin's uniform, she had her Omnicom in one hand as the other held his collar, already starting to bring up the building's technical specs. << Get me close, and I can disable anything you need.>> Karima is definitely not a newbie to this sort of Op. She's done SWAT style raids before and this is just another one. One with guys in Power Armor though and that is where she is primarily focused. Not knowing their capabilities right off hand she takes a bit of a cautious approach and lets Ultra Boy take any incoming fire from them. She moves with an efficiency that is quick, agile, and disturbingly silent. Her own internal sensor systems switch to infrared and she automatically flicks the switch on her primary arm to the same. Seeing her Team Leader drop the guard in the Tower, she subvocally says <>. As Karima is moving for point Delta, she notices that one of the Power Armor units turns back towards Bravo Team. Not sure if Ultra Boy can take on that suit or not, she takes the initiative and her left arm reconfigures into something definitely in-human. Skin and her left sleeve are 'dissolved' by her Nanites and replaced with a gleaming metal tube with coiled magnets around it. An actinic flash of light is pumped towards the Power Armor suit but what hits it isn't light but rather a railgun bolt traveling at several dozen times the speed of sound. When the lights drop and Martin's team has their orders, Maria dares a glance upwards. The guard on their particular toward is leaning wide, craning for a look at... whatever. She takes her ICER from her holster and aims a single shot upwards. It hits the man as he pulls back into the guard nest, and he slumps backwards, unconscious. She then shimmies around the guard tower, gesturing for the others to follow her. On the other side of the guard tower, there's no one in sight. Either Katsuko's a lot faster than Maria remembers, or they're hit an open spot in the patrols. Or the guards are too panicky to actually, you know, keep up with their patrols. She glances left, then right, and makes a break across the space between the guard tower and the building ahead. And while there's no one, she tries turning the handle. Predictably, it doesn't open. Must be some kind of failsafe. < Sofen. Need your strength here, > Maria says, switching to subvocal. < Door won't budge. > Even as she speaks, there telltale gear noises of approaching power armour can be heard. Not one, but two this time. Apparently Sidewinder's learned well from their previous attempts to deal with SHIELD. Cursing under her breath, Maria quietly moves westward and vanishes around a corner. Hopefully the others move quickly too. The one good thing about Sidewinder’s power armor is that its loud, apparently? ‘Etta watches Maria sprint to the next secure shadow and wrestle fruitlessly with the door. A small frown tugs at her lips and she turns to glance at Carol, sparing a fraction of a second for silent communion with her fellow agent before she turns and bolts off at a sprint to catch up with Maria. She’s halfway across the open space when she hears it, the telltale sound of heavy things and gears and pneumatics. Which, considering her open and exposed position, is enough for her to dip into her reserves and crank it up a notch. She /just/ rounds the corner of the building before the sound gets too close for comfort, sliding a little as she sinks into a crouch and skitters to a stop, hand pressed to the plasma pistol strapped to her thigh. Yamaguchi is not quite that fast, no. There's a reason why she indicated Point Echo for Maria's team to insert, because it was a natural gap in the patrol routes, covered by turrets and lights that her charges have removed from the equation. It's an imperfect arrangement, but enough for a good SHIELD team to take advantage of. Swift, sure and absolutely dark, the form of the SHIELD ninja sprints across open ground, taking out one guard after another, though she does not engage with those in powered armor. Her knowledge of their systems says that she is not strong enough to punch through these, as she would have the older, clunkier versions they encountered elsewhere. Those with heavier weapons are better suited to those engagements. Her job is to make sure they are free to do so ... and that the path to Point Charlie is clear for safe extraction of their fellow agents. It rankles her to leave teammates she likes so exposed to danger, but that's the job. The lights are out, the first guard is dead. Now there is some young stud yelling out his powers. Karla stands up and raises her hands out in front of her, fingers interlacing. The palms flip outwards as she pushes her arms forward to crack her knuckles. The hands drop to her sides. Her head rocks to one side to loosen her neck up. "Old school." She whispers and the red lips pull back and part into a grin. The suits of power armor get her attention, and the blue eyes play over the solders quickly. She walks towards the door at first headless of them. Her right hand opens up amd a glow appears in the palm, burning bright and quick. The hand is pulled back and then stabbed forward to unleash a blasted yellow cone beam at the two power armored warriors, the gravatonic partical blast measured to catch both with the concussive swath. Another step forward to the down and a round house kick slams into the center of it to slam it backwards out of the way. "Aoohh, this gives me tingles." So, while Maria calls for Karla, Carol curses inwardly, feeling a bit of that inadequacy thing. She turns and places her back to Maria and the door, going to one knee and aiming her plasma pistol outward from there. She is sweeping it over the area, preparing to engage if anyone moves in on the group. She still hasn't fired yet... others are doing so, but she is holding her fire until she is forced to engage. After all, plasma handguns are cool, powerful, but NOT subtle. There is one thing that Sidewinder hasn't managed to improve: power suit armour. Martin's bullet easily reduces the man's insides to sludge and the power armour slumps forward, no warning given. Likewise the man up top is taken care of easily, as he is in even less armour than his comrades. This also means, of course, that they are not protected against someone like Karima. Or her weapons. The power armoured man takes the brunt of the blast, which leaves a gaping hole in the armour. The power suit slumps at first, and then drops. There's likely a gaping hole in the man too, from that attack. And the sound the remainder of the armour creates? It's loud enough for others to hear. “Someone's over here!” Followed by the clunk-clunk of two more power armoured suits, and a half dozen guards, all of whom must have abandoned their towers to double up patrol efforts. Apparently heedless of Jo Nah's invulnerability, the ones on foot keep firing at him. Even as bullets either deflect or crush against him. They just think they're missing in the dark, apparently. Ahead, near the blast doors in the ground, is a terminal on a stand. It asks merely for a code, and a keyboard is attached to provide it. No keycard this time. Jo flies down and gives one of the guards not in armor a kick to the head. He may not be super strong, but anyone who had ever been invulnerable knows that having bones that do not break and tissues that do not bruise or tear means never having to hold back to keep from hurting yourself. He figures while his job is to be a target, a target who is obviously attacking is going to draw attention. Karima thinks that perhaps the railgun was a bit overkill for that. She didn't know the technical specs of their armor so she went big to make sure the armor would at least see her as more of threat than Martin. To that effect, she causes her left arm to morph back into it's usual look, her nanites even replacing the sleeve of her uniform for her. Subvocally, she says <> Apparently Ultra Boy seems invulnerable to the normal guards firearms. She focuses her attention on the two power suits and suddenly she's moving MUCH faster than most professional race cars! She knows her cybernetic systems are extremely tough and super strong but again she doesn't know those suits capabilities so instead of going with punches and kicks, she continuously moves -through- the legs of the first suit, tripping it then slams her supremely augmented strength down on the suits spine, likely snapping it and therefore rendering it immobile. Martin Kavanaugh had some sort of briefing, of course, but that still didn't prepare him for seeing Violet reduce in size from an actual person to little more than the size of a sterotypical should fairy, gripping at his uniform collar. "The things I see in this job." He mutters to himself, before reaching on his belt and tossing a modified M86 pursuit deniel muntion toward the approching infantry. It was amazing what you could make offensive by removing the arming timer and making the explosive something excesvily exotic. When the device skitters across the ground, four tripwires spring from it, and, if one of those guards was unlucky enough to hit one of them, they would have a millisecond to see the mine jump up a hair under 7 and a half feet before exploding in a mess of sharpnal. Those suits would be proected... infantry less so. <> He starts on the transmission, before looking at her quick movement to attack the suits. <<...Never mind. Carry on. You too, Ultra. Approching infiltrate point now.>> As they reach the terminal itself, Martin curses slightly. Couldn't be something easily stolen, but at the very least, it wasn't biometric. He looks over the housing itself, snapping out a multitool, before freezing. <> He says, turning toward the tiny women riding on his shoulder. Shrinking Violet blushes lightly and utters a timid "Sorry..." in response to Martin's reaction. It would be hard NOT to hear anything he says this close frankly. She had taken out her small omnitool now, and was evidently rather absorbed in her own thinking and plotting, though her mutters are soundless movements of her lips. Even a lipreader is likely to boggle at most of the jargon she's murmuring. It isn't until the trip mine comes oup, that her attention shifts, keeping an eye on the deice as Martin throws it, and once again as it primes itself. She doesn't stop watching it in fact, until Martin addresses her. <>, comes a distracted sound, followed by her peering down at the panel. With a smile, she hops off his shoulder, and mind bogglingly, reduces in size to the point of utterly vanishing! None-the-less, her voice still comes across the comms loud and clear as she says, <> Once inside the housing itself, she has both her omnitool and omnicom out and in her hands. One was scanning the circuitry and layout, while her Omnicom brought up diagnostics. She wasn't atomic size, but she grew just enough to glide between the circuitry panels as she begins working out just what she has to do. "If I reroute this connector here..." she mutters to herself, trying to trick the door into thinking it had gotten the signal to open by routing around the security control. Maria smirks when she peers around the corner. Oh, so Karla's having fun? Well good for her. With the power armours distracted (for as little time as they'd last against Karla), Maria slips back around and pulls one small device from one of the deeper pockets on her jumpsuit: a Mouse Hole torch. With Karla busy and unable to pry the door open, Maria takes the torch to the door, which falls under the extreme heat of the specialized device in perfect time with the last opponent Karla has hitting the ground. < Move it, all three of you! > Maria's already pushing her way inside, repocketing the torch. < Silver Shadow. Point Beta has been breached. Making way to Point Charlie now. Rendezvous outside the door to Charlie. Confirm. > The inside, predictably, is littered with unconscious guards. Looks like Katsuko had her fun. The hall is dark without the lights, but one thing should be obvious: there are few turn offs.No extra rooms, no storage closets. At the one fork in the road, Maria turns left, following the route provided by Katsuko, sure that the others are on her heels. There’s not much for ‘Etta to do here, but she’s not complaining. She steps over a prone figure as she follows Maria with soundless footfalls, tracking her in the near-pitch dark by the sound of her breathing mainly, as the SHIELD uniforms are designed to eschew any reflective bits and bobs that might catch and reflect a glint of light. Oh, a hand. Well, if he’s not dead that guy will probably need a finger splint or two. Not that this is really a priority or worth a second thought at the moment. You don’t sign on to an organization like Sidewinder for the health benefits. Right on MAria's tail, Carol lets Karla play. She draws the Icer in her off hand so she's prepared for either eventuality. It's not like she can't handle the kick of the plasma weapon without a support hand. Once inside though, she says, "Ma'am. Stay behind me." as she takes point, shouldering past Maria. Unexpected dangers up front are the concern now. Thermo-imaging goggles are pulled down over her eyes, and as if to illustrate the point, she puts two Icer rounds into each of two fast responding security guards who seem to not realize how quickly anyone may have gotten inside. Double taps, the standard procedure. "Last mobile targets subdued. Moving to Point Charlie as arranged. Silver Shadow confirms." comes the whisper-soft subvocal communication from the SHIELD ninja, as she swiftly and efficiently makes her way through the remaining passageway towards the rooms holding their SHIELD operatives. Normally, she would breach those doors herself, and already be checking medical conditions when the team arrived for extraction. But her assignment and orders are clear, and Hill always has very good reasons. So instead, Katsuko swiftly if brutally dispatches the last of her opponents, driving his head into the wall, then ziptying wrists and ankles in a blur of motion as she sprints down the hallway to the door. Once there, she pulls out one of her explosive mini-charges and sets it to the lock, keying and priming it as she crouches low in the darkness, waiting for her teammates to arrive. Sofen makes a brief second blast just to make sure the top of the power armor is seperated in the center on both, just like the contents. Apparently the kick did not finish off the door as she had planned, and Karla actually mutters, "Sorry, Boss to Maria." She she sees her torch it. But then she just moves to quickly follow as point for. It is good to relax once in a while, but Karla doesn't let it interfere with what need doing She tries to keep herself as close to the trio she is with as possible. The console is remarkably easy for Shrinking Violet to reroute. Either this is on purpose, or the facility is relatively new, and the more modern security features have yet to be implemented. Regardless of what the truth of the matter is, the console is rerouted. The doors shudder, but then slowly part, vanishing into either side of what is a very wide staircase, built right into the ground underneath the facility. The staircase then terminates at something akin to a balcony-like elevator. Another console here is flashing with a green button. 'Activate', it says. From the top, anyone looking would have a good view of what lies below: sleek jets, even bigger suits of power armour, and perhaps most distressingly, at the very bottom, something that seems to be the beginning of the chassis for a helicarrier replica. Maybe the whole 'rooftop' to this part of the facility can be pulled back? Between the tripwires, Karima, and Jo Nah, the responding guards and power armours are dealt with pretty swiftly. Karima will find out exactly what Karla Sofen found out last time she tangled with the armours – their energy packs are on their backs, and the armour there is rather thin. Slamming them into the ground destroys those energy packs, and leaves the armours powerless. And their pilots trapped within. As the door shudders and opens, Martin expresses some more admiration for the nano-sized women that's able to dace across circuit boads. "I suppose that's one way to hack the system." He mutters, as the doors shudder and smoothly open. He moves his carbine to point forward at any troops that might think to approch them after the whirlwind of fire, before flicking back onto the comms. <> He says, giving her perhaps a minute to explode out of the console... or simply reappear, before moving into the building, moving down the stair case quickly after activating an infrared light to point ahead of him. When they reach the balcony, though... that's when he simply stares at what they're holding down here. This wasn't just a research facility, or producing something as piddling as power armor. This was mass production of advanced weapon systems. The most advanced. If they were arming themselves, it was bad. If they were arming /others/... it was worse. <> With that, he slams on the activate button, and, once it reaches the bottom, starts hunting. ANd, perhaps, shooting. Learning about the spinal-mount power systems, Karima's internal processors immediately tags them as vulnerabilities in the armor design. A pity really because the design flaw is one that can be easily rectified with a distributed power system much like her own. That way if one 'cell' is lost then there are others available to take up the slack. Grunting as she throws herself at the second power suit, Karima unleashes a 10-inch long blade from her right arm. A cyber-spur made of the same material as her semi-crystalline endoskeleton, the blade is literally only 15 microns thick at the edge which might not be as 'sharp' as a monomolecular edge, it has more resiliance and can cut through steel as if it were paper. Karima ducks, dodges, and weaves around the second power suit until she can slice her 'spur' across the back of the suit, severing the power connections for the machine. As it topples over mid-motion, Karima catches it one-handed and proceeds to use it as a 'shield' against any new arrivals. Once the orders come over her internal comm system to head for the elevator, Karima drops the armor and moves with alacrity and grace to the elevator. <> is her response to the command to yank avionics then break stuff. Her own systems constantly record so she doesn't have to turn any recorders on for this. Shrinking Violet 's voice comes across the com immediately, responding <>. Wait.. on route? But.. she didn't come out of the console. Neither can she be seen as Bravo moves into the building. Where was she one might ask? Riding through the building's power grid, actively seeking out the very thing she would soon be directed towards. Still with her omnicom and scanner, she was braced against an electron racing through the building, doing her best to follow the building's own wiring back to its central point. So it is, now and then, standign no taller than the prong of a plug, Violet pokes her head out of a socket, enlarges to the size of an ant atop a camera, anything to get a vantage point. Each time too, her Omnicom comes up to take still images and video footage of whatever she comes across, before she dives back into the electrical system to continue her search. <> Maria's transmission across to the other team is static-y, not helped by the fact that both teams are now underground. It might not even be noticed given, well, the occupation with taking photos of it all. There are sporadic guards for Martin to drop, which is easy enough to do. They're only wearing flak jackets, nothing more. And they only show up every few levels. The top levels seem to be just a lot of 'repeats'. The same jets, the same armours. Lots of the same. Lots of it to smash, while still getting, perhaps, chips or the like for the SHIELD R&D group to look over. They'd probably enjoy a peak, at least. The elevator eventually comes to a screeching halt at ground level. The helicarrier chassis is much closer now. It's also much smaller than the SHIELD helicarrier, and it's basically just that. A chassis. No details. While 'admiring' that, the elevator reactivates once it's been abandoned, lifting to a half dozen levels higher. Here, it fills with robots of some kind, each of which had torn their way out of containers that were otherwise placed near all the jets and assorted armours. Their dark heads light up with a sickly green to resemble eyes, and guns appear in their hands, activating with rapid bursts of fire. And if that was complicated enough, a door can be heard opening somewhere on the bottom level, with the slow ka-chunk, ka-chunk of power armour footsteps heralding the arrival of another. Shrinking Violet can and will find the control room fairly easily. This set of consoles, however, is much more complicated than the one above, and contains numerous attempts to keep would-ve hackers and electronics experts from rewiring and reworking the hardware to give them access. Of course, it's still 21st century tech, and they probably weren't expecting someone like Salu to be there to tamper with it all. Jo sees one chance to end this quickly. He had been on Ultra Speed and he uses that to rush to under the Helicarrier Chassis. He shouts, "Ultra Strength" and hefts the huge frame into the air, thhrowing it into the midst of the robots with all his mighty strength. Shrinking Violet eyes the controlroom, spying on everyone like a fly on the wall, quite literally. Over the com, her voice crackles, but at least comes through complete. << Control room lo~ated. Bravo do you copy, Con~l room located. ... patrols, please advise.>>. She stayed high in the room, continuing to photograph and record the layout, computer systems and functions. Landing atop a tall computer bank, she makes her way inside. Even without orders there was no time to waste, doing her best to compile a diagnostic layout of the terminals, security. She was simply scanning, small lazer lights eminating from her omnitool. She doesn't understand 'modern' technology perfectly yet, but what she can do is run algorythms on her own advanced omnicom, searching for vulnerabilities, physical or electronic. At the moment, its like a mosquito gently poking at the system. Martin waits for the elevator to go down once, then searches through, finds guards, and takes them down with quick silenced bursts from his weapon. It does, eventually, require reloading. Just at the bottom level. Which is important of course, because it means he's wasting little time in putting in a clip of aummunition for the situation at hand. Which seemed to be 'problem'. As the elevator starts coming down again, Martin dashes toward cover, an aircraft with it's landing craft removed, skidding to a halt. His first action is to pull the pin on a grenade, and toss it out in front of him, watching it detonate after three seconds in a burst of aluminum chaff and electronic noice makers, before popping out of cover and taken hold of the M302 underneath his rifle, pointing it down range to the elevator itself, and aiming... for the mechanism at the elevator itself, attempting to hammer an AV grenade into it and take a few birds with one stone. The opening of the door nearby and the clunk of other power armor has him on comms. <> A moment, before he curses, and flicks back. <> A pause. <> Karima is festooned with various pockets and pouches on her load bearing harness so she puts them to good use by stuffing them with avionics packages from the various jets. She's recording everything also but as she tears out the avionics packages, she leaves behind a small ball of Nanites that she commands to basically eat the jets. The Nanites are literally the size of bacteria but there's billions of them in each small ball. The process will be fairly slow but getting rid of the nanites will be as hard as getting rid of an infection. A VERY resistant infection. As she's moving among the last few Jets, she hears the gunfire from the robots and then the noise of more power suits arriving. Karima just smiles slightly, responds over the comms with <> She then slings her SMG and proceeds to run towards the power suits. Out pops that 10-inch monoedged blade from her left arm and her right arm re-configures into some sort of short-barreled cannon that glows with an almost hellish orange light. Once she is in sight of the power suits, she activates her tactical combat programming and becomes a leaping, whirling, and extremely dextrous bit of cybernetic death amongst them. A slash here, a blast of ionized plasma there, a hellishly strong kick now and again thrown in for the giggles. Oh sure, Maria wasn't standing in the room when the floor dropped, but once it did she followed Carol and the other formerly-captive agents down. As if she was going to let them face something alone! The static-y message from Kavanaugh comes across, but she doesn't have a chance to answer as, between the actions of Carol and Katsuko, she's taken out of the way of the burst of plasma. “Help Danvers!” Hill orders Katsuko. Maria pulls her own gun and makes a run for Hedges, who immediately retreats through a door that reveals itself when he puts his hand against the wall. It remains open, and several ordinary foot soldiers pour out. The first two are met with ICER shots to the forehead, while the next one takes a fist to the face. 'Plasma' keeps shooting at Carol, frowning. There should have been a pile of ashes by now! But those momentary thoughts are lost, between listening to Karla's threat and turning to focus on her, and then Black suddenly shooting at him, too. With a name like Plasma one might think that bullets aren't going to hurt, but they seem to find their marks, sinking into his skin and interrupting whatever he was about to do. Plasma is hot. It is painful. Most folks wouldn't even feel the pain as they flash fried to ash. Carol grits her teeth and stays on her feet as long as possible. . o o O O (Well, you always wanted to go out in a blaze. This is pretty blazing...) she thinks to herself. Green plasma washes over her and the pain is immense. Her plasma pistols lose containment in their ammo packs and detonate in a pair of muffled *whump* sounds. I mean seriously, they're just battery packs and in the heart of a mini-star. The view to everyone else shows a humanoid figure in the heart of this... and the wall of plasma is creeping closer to the agents... and then it stops. It begins creeping back from them... Carol's silhouette hasn't faded yet oddly. She didn't burn up as much as it -feels- like she is. Suddenly, all of the plasma in the room just vanishes... as if sucked into a black hole at its center. Carol is standing there, her uniform as revealing as a comic book code will allow. She stands there, smouldering, flesh bubbling on her back before she looks up, singed ends of her hair leaking a bit of smoke. "Ow..." she mutters. The moment she says that word however, things change. Her hair vanishes, replaced by what can only be called.. a halo made of orange-ish white flame. This halo seems to combine with an aura about her that literally melts away at the armored and reinforced ceiling above her. She inclines her head as she looks to the other agents, and then... slowly, she just grins and turns her back on her comrades, facing Plasma. "Plasma is it?" she asks snarkily. "Good name. My name is Carol. That..." she indicates Karla, "Is Ms. Marvel. I used to be Binary. Captain Marvel is the current title. But you... you can call me Daddy." she says as she surges forward to throw a punch at the guy that could level one of these reinforced walls. 'Help Danvers'. Those are Hill's orders, and Katsuko cannot refute them. She wants to; her instinct and personal demand is to protect Hill at all costs, the rest of the whole damned op just about bed amned; but the same unswerving loyalty that drives her to want to save Hill demands that she never, ever disobey her Deputy Director's direct and incontrovertible orders. Katsuko darts forward, getting ready to help Carol even as the other woman is being incinerated. With a resounding 'rip' sound, Katsuko's ninja garb, along with body armor and gear is shredded away. It's just so much reinforced fabric confetti. In its place, as the figure that was Katsuko leaps forward, ready to cover Carol's incinerating form from more plasma, is instead a gleaming silver figure, most features subsumed into a liquidy smooth shape with very few defining features. Almost more like a silver mannequin instead of a human figure like a statue. Silver Shadow indeed. The gleaming metal ninja leaps ... and the plasma wake dies away. In just the seconds it takes for that to resolve, she lands in a roll, tiny crampon spikes forming on the soles of her feat for an instant as she twists and leaps for the open door, and erupts into action on the poor normal soldier types that emerge from it. She explodes into their midst, arms and legs flying in what can only be termes a literal blur of silvery martial arts maneuvers, each delivered with superhuman strength, tremendous speed, and staggering momentum and accuracy. Soldiers? What soldiers? Karla screams in rage as Plasma attacks Carol, and she does blast at the creature in raw rage as he seems to consume Carol. It is just too little to deter Plasma in time. The eyes burn golden as Carol disappears under the blasts. Karla's attention lifts up Hedges, a check to make certain Maria is not in any real danger. Then there is another scream worthy of a Greek Fury, a sneer rises. Karla Sofen, Ms. Marvel, is bathed in a blinding light white light. Karla surges after Hedges like a a flamming comet, becoming intangible in her pursuit. Between Jo Nah's stunt with his strength and Martin stalling the elevator, the activated robots do not end up dropping down to attack the SHIELD team. That leaves the power armour, but Karima and her nearly-monomolecular blade deal with them pretty easily. No defense against that! And from the wide hallway that those power armours came from, comes the panicked, hurried footsteps of a single man. He honestly thought that Plasma would deal with Hill and her cronies, but seeing how the attack somehow /powered up/ one of the blondes, he beat a hasty retreat. He had a jet waiting for him, ready to help him leave. Problem #1 was underestimating Maria's SHIELD team. Problem #2 becomes obvious when he emerges from the short tunnel... and finds himself face to face with Karima Shapandar. “...who the fuck are you?” His face isn't unknown. Maria showed the newcomers the face and profile of the man they were after. And then that /scream/ follows Hedges through the hall, and he nervously turns his head, stupidly ignoring the SHIELD agents. “...what the fuck was that?” Soon enough there are more guards that pour through the tunnel in an effort to defend him, but... well, it's not going to help, is it? No power armours, and Plasma taken down so easily by a repowered Captain Marvel. Still, they fire their weapons at everyone present, when they come within sights. As Maria runs into the hall to follow she ends up in a fistfight, pulling her knife in the middle. Oh, she doesn't stab the man, but when the opportunity presents itself, she cracks the hilt against the guard's skull, dropping him to the ground. << Hill to Kavanaugh. Hedges is heading down a hallway. Believed to be an escape route. If I haven't lost my sense of direction he might be headed to a flight hangar. Might be Point Delta. Keep an eye out and STOP HIM. >> When the solders start rushing out in force, ‘Etta feels the time has come to see what Dr. Banner has wrought with her shock baton. The hand not clutched around her gun goes to her thigh holster, plucking it free and flicking it out to its full extension. She pumps another round into Plasma and spares a glance down at the thing, which spits little sparks occasionally, like it were impatient to be wielded. And then Carol happens. There’s almost no other way to describe it because suddenly she’s happening all over the place and glowing and hurtling towards Plasma. ‘Etta almost feels bad for the guy, but... you know, not /actually/. And meantime more foot soldiers are rushing out and Agent Black is rushing towards them. She brings her wrist back, then ficks the tip of it towards the guy in the lead. There is a bright light and the smell of burning hair and the man is hefted off his feet bodily, taking the two guys behind him with him as the lot of them go crashing back into the concrete wall. Even amidst the fracas Etta spares half a second to boggle at it and mutter, “Well, bugger me, Doctor Banner.” And then she’s off rushing after Maria, watching her back. As for Carol, her and Plasma quickly vanish into what ends up being a brand new hole in one of the walls. It's not long before the ground up in the middle of the place starts to swell, like it's bubbling, and then a loud *CRACK!* can be heard, one that will register on seismic sensors for miles, as Plasma comes breaking up through the ground, sending dirt and rock spraying in all directions. Floating up out of that hole, Carol eyes the grounds around her and rolls her neck. Her comm unit was totally melted, but she calls out, "SHIELD... depart at your leisure. This place is -ending-... now." And then she begins the proccess of helping Jo by sending photonic blasts here and there, destroying defenses, blasting through powered armor... and generally enjoying being a wrecking crew. "Queen Alpha, Queen Bravo, light the candles and touchdown outside Point Echo ASAP." comes the altered voice of Agent Yamaguchi, as she commands the quinjets to move from the original drop-off location and land just outside the site perimeter. As Captain Marvel says, its' time to leave, and there's no sense hoofing it half a mile up a hill to the extraction point while carrying a few dozen or more captured prisoners. That's just ridiculous. The gleaming silver figure does not bother to give chase after Maria and Etta, trusting those two women to take care of themselves. Instead, she starts gathering up the broken, battered and shattered soldiers, applying restraints and then literally tying them together. Then she starts dragging the whole lot of them up the very hole Carol just blasted in the ceiling of the room where they ended up. Once they are up, she drops them off and heads for the ones inside the building, performing similar maneuvers. They're not leaving anyone behind. Everyone and every iota of data and gear is getting extracted back. And then? Then they're laying waste to this place. There will be no more Sidewinder after this. Unfortunately Karima didn't exactly come out of that fight with those power armors unscathed. Her cannon arm, the right one, is a mangled wreck where one of the suits managed to grab her and probe that it was a LOT stronger than she thought it would be. It yanked her off the ground and literally bashed her up and down a few times much to the cyborg's chagrin! Eventually she extricates her right arm from the suits grip by literally tearing her own arm off at the elbow! Sparking metal and white drops drip from the end of the stump for a few moments before her nanite regenerative systems engage to repair the damage. The woman is in obvious pain from the damage but the suits are down. When Hedges appears in front of her, she is momentarily surprised but her facial recognition systems are top notch and she quickly reconfigures the pinky on her undamaged left hand into a dart that she then fires right into Hedges left butt cheek because he turned to look back down the tunnel at the scream coming after him. One hundred and fifty thousand volts of electricity then courses down that fine metal strand attached to that dart and discharges into all those nice fatty and conductive fat cells of his left glutious maximus. Karima just mutters "Dumbass." as she leaves him a twitching pile of businessdung on the ground. She then goes to see about extricating what's left of her right arm from that power armor's grip. That's what she gets for getting cocky. Shrinking Violet winces a little as calls come in. Teammates in trouble, orders to hurry, not to mention dealing with... ~bwip!~ "Oh." she says rather casually while sitting atop a capacitor. "I'm in.". Thats when some mild pandemonium starts in the few seconds of the facility that haven't been abjectly trashed. <>. Technitians in the control room itself will be in for a treat. Dry chemical fire suppression is wonderful for rooms with delicate systems, as there is no risk of shorting out equipment. Unfortunately, the chemicals often wreak havok on skin. Fire suppression systems start to go off throughout the building, but never in rooms where there are fires. Instead, those systems suddenly seem to lock up. Doors open, seemingly of their own accord, and one by one terminals begin to find system access... tricky. She plays with the base troops, routing them into chokepoints or straight into the superstrength bashers, while SHIELD agents will find no impediment moving through the building. This is where it becomes all to easy. The essence of a SHIELD agent was getting into bad positions for the job, and then getting yourself out of them. With a little bit of help. Martin had thought that elevator of robots would have been the death of him, but a good shot and some help being backed up by people who could rip through power armor like it was butter. A quick check around the wreck of the fighter he had hid behind, including where a round seems to have cut through his armor, close to grazing... well, taking a chunk out of his side. The explosions detonating else where in the facility were certainly audible from here. <> Martin stands, and moves at a moderate jog toward the tunnel itself, just as Karima takes out Hedges with a dark to the... well, that's embarassing. <> He notes, eyes moving toward the damaged right arm. <> He says, before the onrush of boots down the tunnel has him pull the pin on another grenade. This one's an incendary... which he prims for a few seconds. TO go off /after/ most of the guards are past. And in the confusion, he quickly removes the supressor from his rifle, and starts engaging the guards as they come through, with single shots... of the micro-explosive AV rounds his carbine was still loaded with, shots aimed for center mass or the head. And if any were alive after that, the rifle is held on it's sling, and his hand moves to draw the Glock 18C at his side, switching to automatic fire and aiming short bursts at anyone remaining up. <> Shrinking Violet beams to herself, up until mention of the place coming down. Her startled jump nearly sends her falling onto a heat sync, only just straighteningout in time with her flight ring. << I-it is? Right! I've got most of it in hard storage... m-most of what I could find. Lets see...>> She underestimated the devistation from the video feeds. Rerouting the bases OWN transmitters to begin uploading to an offsite dummy account, she'll let SHIELD handle routing it about to confirm security. With that in place, she... lingers. Just long enough to make sure everybody gets clear. Reducing further, she begins to ride the building's electrical system again, stepping out of an electrical socket at the evac point and regrowing, ensuring the area is secure. Maria Hill and Henrietta Black fight their way to the other end of the tunnel, in time to see Karima drop Hedges. Hill smirks. "Good job," though she does actually wince when she sees what has happened to the cyborg. "Are you all right to lift him? We do need to get out of here," she says, nodding as Martin's message comes through the comms. << Confirm acknowledgement, Agent Digby. You heard Agent Kavanaugh give the pull out order? >> She does spy the opening doors, offering an alternate route, and nudges Henrietta that way first. She's confident that Vi did indeed listen. Hill too lingers, but only long enough to see Ultra Boy, Karima, and Kavanaugh find the door too. The two super-powered blondes and Katsuko, she's confident will get out. Then and only then, she follows, using her ICER to help knock out any guard that shows up - but there are few by this point, most having preferred to escape and retreat entirely. Once on the surface, Hill communicates with headquarters directly. << Hill to the Helicarrier. Operation a success. Target is captive, and we're returning to base... >> Category:Log